EDUCATION
Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology and Environmental Studies, Yale University
MPhil, Geographical Research, University of Cambridge
B.A., Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard University
BIO
Christian Espinosa Schatz is a doctoral candidate in Yale’s combined degree in Anthropology and Environmental Studies, where he studies how climate change intersects with the local environmental relations of marginalized peoples. Christian’s dissertation project focuses on the relationship between climate change, migration, and local livelihoods in the Mam Mayan agrarian communities of Guatemala’s western highlands. This project studies how the risks and uncertainties of U.S.-bound migration are increasingly intertwined with Mayan land-use practices and how, in turn, Mayan land-use practices are affected by climate change. The dissertation argues that climate change is not a linear force “pushing” the Central American poor to migrate, but one part of a cybernetic web of human, non-human, local and trans-local actors present in the act of migration, including indigenous “coyotes” or migrant smugglers, U.S. detention centers, Mayan-Evangelical prayer rituals, and stands of alder trees (Alnus firmifolia) cultivated for firewood. This approach, inspired by decolonial methodologies within anthropology and indigenous studies, highlights the agency of the Mam Mayan people by asking how migration and agriculture enable their response to climate change. Christian is a first-generation college student from Southern California and welcomes questions from other first-generation students considering a PhD.
Keywords: Climate change; international migration; smallholder agriculture; decolonial methodologies; religion and human ecology; Central America